Dewey Redman

By way of introduction, the weekend's headliner at the Jazz Showcase simply told the audience, "I'm Joshua Redman's father-Dewey." That terse and bittersweet little phrase, however, said a great deal about the odd relationship between fame and achievement in the jazz music industry today. Veteran tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, after all, has worked with Ornette Coleman, Wes Montgomery, Keith Jarrett, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and other artists too...

Dewey Redman, an expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist and bandleader who had been at the aesthetic frontiers of jazz since the 1960s, has died in Brooklyn, N.Y. Mr. Redman, 75, died of liver failure, said Velibor Pedevski, his brother-in-law. Born Walter Redman, he grew up in Ft. Worth. He started off on clarinet at 13, playing in a church band. Not long after, he met Ornette Coleman when they both played in the high school marching band. Their friendship would become one of the crucial...

By way of introduction, the weekend's headliner at the Jazz Showcase simply told the audience, "I'm Joshua Redman's father-Dewey." That terse and bittersweet phrase, however, said a great deal about the odd relationship between fame and achievement in the jazz music industry today. Veteran tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, after all, has worked with Ornet te Coleman, Wes Montgomery, Keith Jarrett, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and other artists too...

Like an elder statesman who no longer has to prove anything to anyone, tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman played a coolly understated set Tuesday night at the Jazz Showcase. With the exception of some incendiary blues playing, this was jazz improvisation stripped to its essence, with one relatively simple riff followed by another. And though Redman offered occasional flashes of bebop-tinged virtuosity and fleeting gestures of abstract experimentation, for the...

Dewey Redman, an expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist and bandleader who had been at the aesthetic frontiers of jazz since the 1960s, has died in Brooklyn, N.Y. Mr. Redman, 75, died of liver failure, said Velibor Pedevski, his brother-in-law. Born Walter Redman, he grew up in Ft. Worth. He started off on clarinet at 13, playing in a church band. Not long after, he met Ornette Coleman when they both played in the high school marching band. Their friendship would become one of the crucial...

Tom Harrell: The Art of Rhythm (RCA Victor) Though listeners tend to think of Tom Harrell as a deeply lyric trumpeter/flugelhornist, his gifts as composer-arranger are even more imposing. Those who doubt it ought to check out Harrell's exquisitely poetic new release, "The Art of Rhythm," a recording that just as easily could have been titled "The Art of Melody," "The Art of Arranging" or "The Art of Understatement." The textural intricacies of Harrell's arrangements--with multiple strands of melody woven around...

Silence (Keith Jarrett, Impulse!). In the 1970s pianist Keith Jarrett had a quartet featuring Dewey Redman on tenor sax, Charlie Haden on bass and Paul Motian on drums. Talk about an oasis. This group moved through the bad times of fusion and free jazz with an extraordinary sureness both of invention and tradition. Its work-this from 1977-remains solid today. The only flaw in the reissue is that it drops three cuts from the two original albums from which it is...

North American art museums own comparatively few works by Old Masters for the self-evident reason that the artists lived, worked and were collected assiduously in Europe. Traveling shows of Old Master drawings are, therefore, special events. But "Michelangelo and His Influence: Drawings from Windsor Castle," which opens Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago,' is more special than most. The 73 pieces by the artist as well as famous followers will be on view through June 22. 312-993-3600.

Expectations (Keith Jarrett, Columbia Jazz Contemporary Masters). This reissue from a 1972 recording places the marvelous and eccentric pianist Keith Jarrett between two distinct musical approaches. On one side was his flirtation with gloss and fusion, on the other a journey into new and more serious improvisational forms. Happily, Jarrett moved decisively in the more serious direction. And the hints of it on this recording (with Dewey Redman, Paul Motian and...

Though the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Express Your Self Festival ended over the Labor Day weekend, the music festival season in Chicago apparently still is going strong. This weekend, for instance, an important event emphasizing new sounds and ideas in jazz will take place at the Sutherland Ballroom, 4659 S. Drexel Blvd. The fourth annual Hyde Park/Kenwood Jaaz Festival, Friday through Sunday, will feature noted Chicago and visiting musicians. Its expansive and stylistically diverse roster suggests...

Dream Keeper (Charlie Haden and the Liberation Orchestra, Blue Note). If you have any appetite at all for large group jazz, go get this CD. Don`t be put off by the political edge in the name of the group and of some of the tunes. This work is about music first, and it speaks with authority beyond ideology. Carla Bley's arrangements are sublime, Charles Haden's bass a solid center, and the band balanced and bold-from Branford Marsalis and Tom Harrell to Dewey Redman and...

By way of introduction, the weekend's headliner at the Jazz Showcase simply told the audience, "I'm Joshua Redman's father-Dewey." That terse and bittersweet phrase, however, said a great deal about the odd relationship between fame and achievement in the jazz music industry today. Veteran tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, after all, has worked with Ornet te Coleman, Wes Montgomery, Keith Jarrett, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and other artists too...

A Look Inside (Kenny Drew Jr., Antilles). The best two cuts on this new CD feature tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman (son of Dewey Redman) along with Kenny Drew Jr. (son of Kenny Sr.). It's a matter of two second-generation jazzmen paying homage. One cut is a tune by Thelonious Monk, the other is by John Coltrane. What you hear is a new virtuosity and a lack of the old edge. Roughness was sometimes a sin of fathers, but thrill was its compensation. The two sons do fine...

By way of introduction, the weekend's headliner at the Jazz Showcase simply told the audience, "I'm Joshua Redman's father-Dewey." That terse and bittersweet little phrase, however, said a great deal about the odd relationship between fame and achievement in the jazz music industry today. Veteran tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, after all, has worked with Ornette Coleman, Wes Montgomery, Keith Jarrett, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and other artists too...

Randy Weston The Spirits of Our Ancestors (Antilles) (STAR)(STAR)(STAR)1/2 The 10 extended pieces (most of which have appeared in other forms) on Weston's new double disc sum up his lifelong musical, ancestral and spiritual quest, highlight his holistic merger of African, African-American and Afro-Cuban forms and reveal the personal roots of his work in his childhood home (celebrated in the opening "African Village Bedford-Stuyvesant"), immediate family...

His sax will knock your socks off He's got the King Midas touch. Well, maybe everything Joshua Redman touches doesn't exactly turn to gold, but it seems like this 25-year-old is good at everything. It would be easy to hate him if he weren't so darn nice. It's no wonder his high school class in Berkeley, Calif., voted him most likely to succeed. (And even then, he showed his sense of fun by dressing like a bum for the "most likely to" picture in the yearbook.) In case you haven't heard, Joshua is the...

Tom Harrell: The Art of Rhythm (RCA Victor) Though listeners tend to think of Tom Harrell as a deeply lyric trumpeter/flugelhornist, his gifts as composer-arranger are even more imposing. Those who doubt it ought to check out Harrell's exquisitely poetic new release, "The Art of Rhythm," a recording that just as easily could have been titled "The Art of Melody," "The Art of Arranging" or "The Art of Understatement." The textural intricacies of Harrell's arrangements--with multiple strands of melody woven around...

A Look Inside (Kenny Drew Jr., Antilles). The best two cuts on this new CD feature tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman (son of Dewey Redman) along with Kenny Drew Jr. (son of Kenny Sr.). It's a matter of two second-generation jazzmen paying homage. One cut is a tune by Thelonious Monk, the other is by John Coltrane. What you hear is a new virtuosity and a lack of the old edge. Roughness was sometimes a sin of fathers, but thrill was its compensation. The two sons do fine...

Though the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Express Your Self Festival ended over the Labor Day weekend, the music festival season in Chicago apparently still is going strong. This weekend, for instance, an important event emphasizing new sounds and ideas in jazz will take place at the Sutherland Ballroom, 4659 S. Drexel Blvd. The fourth annual Hyde Park/Kenwood Jaaz Festival, Friday through Sunday, will feature noted Chicago and visiting musicians. Its expansive and stylistically diverse roster suggests...

They're young, gifted, hip, hungry and fiercely committed to jazz. Though they're still unknown to most listeners, they believe that won't be the case for long. For now, they're content simply to pay their dues in neighborhood clubs or as sidemen to the big names. And though they're only in their late teens and early 20s, they're breathing hard on the heels of the thirty- and twentysomething stars who are their elders. For those who doubted the depth of the jazz resurgence that began in the 1980s, the...